Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

Arctic Soul  - Where Everything is White Except the Music Salka Sól (l),  Gnúsi  Yones , and  his partner  Steinunn Jóns - photo by Andrew Weir By Stephen Weir  / Caribbean Camera ( Reykjavík, Iceland)   —- You get off the plane, suck in the super clean air, and get your bearings.  Everything is white. The white tipped mountains. The flecks and traces of snow in the air. And then there are the people.  Draco Malfoy white blond hair.  Bright alabaster skin.  Perfectly coiffured and impeccably dressed (except for the industrial strength snow boots).   Salka Sól by  Stephen Weir Iceland is the last place in the world you would expect to hear the soulful sounds of Jamaican reggae. AmabAdamA have been writing and performing Arctic Reggae for the past five years, and their music is as pure Irie as the driven snow. Gnúsi  Yones , his partner  Steinunn Jóns   and their best friend  Salka Sól   have been performing in Iceland and England for over ten years and have taught a

FM Belfast Teaches Canadians How To Run Around Iceland In Our Underwear When It Is 20 Below.  Singer Lóa Hjálmtýsdottir in a mound of ribbons By Stephen Weir written for my Huffington Post blog Published in the Travel Section Caribbean Camera newspaper May 2018 Two men in front tried the impossible, putting on their pants while stumbling to the exit. There was    an urgency – it was 2 am and we were being herded out the concert doors into a normal Icelandic night. Black. Windy. Sub-Zero temperature. It didn’t take a detective to figure out that the laundry droppers were Canadians – the Roots labels gave ‘em away.    Not that anyone in the crowded Reykjavik art gallery cared about their lack of  trous . Blame the lack of clothes on the band that 600 of us had just seen. It was FM Belfast, one of Canada’s most favoured Icelandic bands. The veteran electro-pop group closed out the Airwaves music festival concert with a group participation song called Underwear.   Lóa

Huffington Post Story by Stephen Weir. December 12, 2016 http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/stephen-weir/icelandic-reggae-amabadama_b_13533242.html   AmabAdamA  strut their way through the longest night of the year  On December 21 st – Day One of Winter – sunlight in Reykjavik is just a 4 hour 7 minute low-in-the-sky rumour. The dim sol stays lit long enough for Icelanders to shop, grab an espresso, gas the car and suck up what little light the gods offer that day. Busy. Busy. But oh so brief. What do Icelanders do for the other 20 hours of a winter day? For   Gnúsi Yones,  Salka Sól Eyfel and Steinunn Jónsdóttir, the three singing stars of   AmabAdamA   the seemingly never-ending night is time for perfecting the Jamaica strut,   singing and writing reggae music -- all in Icelandic of course!   Next spring when the sun comes back, AmabAdamA will have a new album for their growing world fan base. I celand Crowd Goes Wild When Band Took The Stage There wasn’t much ligh